OpenFamily is a self-hosted GPS location tracker for households that want to share family members’ locations. Its live map uses OpenStreetMap and displays photo avatars, battery levels, last-seen times, and movement states, with updates over WebSocket. Saved places can prompt arrival and departure alerts. Safety tools include SOS with a ten-second countdown, check-ins with notes, and non-emergency requests for family help. Location history shows trails, place stays, stops, and in-transit segments, with detailed history retained for 90 days. Family members join with an invite code and can be assigned admin, member, or child roles. The web admin panel manages accounts and families, creates invites, configures optional SMS, downloads the Android APK, and displays the live map. OpenFamily runs as a Docker Compose stack on a VPS, Synology NAS, home server, or LAN machine. It is free and open source, with Android, iOS, web, API, and self-hosted options. Account details, coordinates, saved places, and history are stored in PostgreSQL on the operator’s server; default map tile hosts can see the viewed area.
Who it is for
OpenFamily is designed for households with someone comfortable running a small Docker stack. Its intended audience is household location sharing, rather than fleets or public tracking.
What is good
- Live map shows battery, last-seen, and movement details.
- Saved places can trigger arrival and departure alerts.
- Includes SOS, check-ins, and family help requests.
- Detailed location history is retained for 90 days.
- Does not require Google Play Services.
What to know first
- Requires a household member to run a Docker stack.
- Database rows are not encrypted by the app.
- Default map tile hosts can see the viewed area.
- iOS push uses APNs; optional SMS uses Twilio.
Verdict
OpenFamily offers household location sharing alongside alerts, safety flows, and detailed history, with data stored on the operator’s server. Running it requires comfort with a Docker deployment and production upkeep such as backups, strong secrets, and host disk encryption.
OpenFamily plans and pricing
All plansCompared on family locator apps
- Free plan
- No
- Location alerts
- Yes
- Location history
- limited
- Platform support
- both
- SOS tools
- Yes
